


still i will live here

by nbsherlock



Category: The Goldfinch (2019), The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Frottage, Intricate Rituals, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-30 22:50:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20104915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nbsherlock/pseuds/nbsherlock
Summary: i manhandle him onto the bed until he’s laying on his side, i cover him up so he doesn’t get cold.i fall asleep fully clothed, shoes still tied.





	still i will live here

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [still i will live here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21032528) by [Rosy_Warner](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosy_Warner/pseuds/Rosy_Warner)

I wake to the unfamiliar thrumming of being almost entirely sober. None of the heavy weight of waking up still drunk, the blood rushing ache of still being high, hours later. 

Boris is next to me, snoring and still slightly flushed from drink. He drank far more than me, his tolerance still higher than mine years and years of binge drinking later. He looks soft, uncharacteristically small when he isn’t speaking. Vulnerable. I’m comforted by this until his head slumps to the side and I notice a love bite— it can’t be anything else— under his jaw. 

Instantly I’m transported back to the desert. Heat making our skin slick, drugs making our hearts beat too fast. Hands clapped over each other’s mouths. Passing out immediately after, waking up in a state of specific disarray. Boris tossing me a wet paper towel. Saying nothing. 

Going through the motions.

I must have not been drunk enough for a complete blackout, my mind offering flashes of my mouth on him; of his whining, desperate sounds. Jesus fucking christ. 

My head starts to pound. The obvious answer is the minibar, hair of the dog, etc. But we depleted that last night, noses wrinkling after shots of fireball. 

“Is pointless,” he had waved a hand around. "Why put this flavor in? Ruin perfectly good whiskey.”

I had shrugged, the warmth burning down my throat and into my gut. Wanted to reach out and touch and—

There are the pills. Bottles in my bag. I swallow a few and take one last glance at Boris before drifting back off. 

—

“The fuck?” his voice, echoing in the hotel bathroom. He sticks his head out to question me, “We have girls here last night, yes?”

I shrug, remembering him arching up under my hands. “Dunno.”

“I am mess,” he ducks back into the bathroom. “All bruised.” he curses. I remember he was planning to see his kids today and feel a shock of guilt. 

He’s saying something to me. I shake my head. “What?”

“You know how to get rid of this?”

I say no despite the wives’ tales sitting on my tongue. Taking a hairbrush to his skin. Ice melting against the lines of his neck, pooling in his collarbones. 

He sighs, huffs, closes the bathroom door. 

I feel the crawl of arousal on my skin for the first time in— well, since the beginning of me and Kitsey. desperate for each other in a vague way, desperate for anyone. 

He exits the bathroom in a turtleneck, seemingly producing clothing from nowhere as always. I want to tug at it, at him. Look at my marks on his skin. in the back of my head, I notice I’m getting hard watching him go about his morning. 

He turns to me and throws my shirt from off the floor. “You’re coming, yes?” He straightens up the bags, takes a swig of vodka from a bottle I didn’t see earlier. “To see my kids?”

I nod, dragging myself from the bed. my body feels over sensitive. I think of him, crazed after the heist years ago, promising me a blowjob. My skin aches. I think of him now, slightly older, on his knees in front of me. Pushing my hand through his hair. 

I make a quick exit to the bathroom. 

—

The kids don’t look like Boris until they suddenly do. The sneering curls of their mouths, the whine of his daughter. Very much Boris, all at once. I feel overwhelmed. 

His wife— no warm welcome, kiss, hug— is beautiful. Blonde and blue and white. Shining despite the grey outside. She rolls her eyes at Boris's enthusiasm at seeing his kids, sips from a big glass of red wine. The contrast is so particular and stunning that I’m suddenly aware of what attracted Boris to her. Light playing with dark. Boris picks up his daughter— now smiling. I wonder if anyone could be immune to his charms. 

“You have any good movies?” he says, carrying her to the couch and setting her down. 

“We have Netflix,” she informs him. the other two scamper about, pulling at him. Boris lifts the smallest into his lap. 

I feel suddenly stranded. His wife clears her throat. “So,” her voice just slightly accented. She reminds me, suddenly, of Mrs. Barbour, cool-toned and stiff. I need a drink. “You’re the friend.”

I suppose that’s what I am.

She sips her wine. “Is he doing okay?” 

This startles me. I was under the impression that she didn’t care one way or the other. 

Her eyes dart from me to him and back, unanswered. “He’s happy?”

Then, I understand the implication. “We aren’t—“ I say, incredibly loud and awkward. The tv drowns me out, thank god. 

She looks surprised before smoothing her features. “No?”

“No, we,” I shake my head. “Just friends.”

She pulls a cigarette from a pack in her bag and offers it to me. I accept, letting her light mine as she lights hers. 

“The way he spoke of you,” she says as she exhales. “You’d think— well, never mind.”

I want to press. To ask how he spoke of me. My silence must imply this. 

“Theo this, and Potter that. Speaking about you even when he didn’t know he was. And with all that time between you,” she shrugs. “He loved you.” She looks over at him. We both hear the children laugh. “Loves you.”

I wonder how she knows he still does. Then I wonder, slightly panicked, if he told her about the painting. 

She smokes, looks at her nails, drinks her wine. Then she smiles, unnervingly knowing, at me. “You made him happier than I ever could, even when you weren’t around.”

I feel frozen to the spot. I can hear him, laughing and teasing the children. The dichotomy; this caring father, the glazed over drunk that I kissed last night. 

I put my cigarette out. She watches me do it. 

Then, “do you want something to eat?”

—

He’s in high spirits when we leave, soberer than I am, as I had split two bottles of red with his wife as we talked and ate. 

“They are so big!” Boris whoops, spinning as we walk down the sidewalk; snow falling and sticking to his hair, the collar of his coat. “It is so strange.”

He takes a cigarette out of the pack in his coat pocket and lights it. I watch him, in the bright light of a street lamp, inhale and smile down at his shoes. He passes the cigarette to me. Years of this should make it feel less like a secondhand kiss. They haven’t. I feel his mouth against mine, taste him. Feel as childish as I always do when I'm around him.

“We should go for drinks?” He puts the cigarette out in the snow when we’re done. “Toast to my kids?”

I nod. I think about curling a hand around the back of his neck and pulling him in. I think about breathing into him. He opens the passenger side door and hops in. I drive us where he points. 

—

Time slows after we toast to each of his children, his children as a unit, his wife (shrugging even as he says it) for keeping them safe. 

I’m ahead of him, for once. A complete mess. I blink in and out of coherence, noticing that my hand’s been on his thigh for ages but not moving it away. 

We’re both laughing but I don’t remember what had been funny. 

I want to bury my face in his neck, bite under his jaw again. Things I shouldn’t do in public, even if public is a mostly empty bar in Sweden. 

His hand is on mine then and he’s saying we should head back, that we need to check out early tomorrow morning and that he wants to get a few hours of sleep. I nod, head heavy and bobbing back and forth. We get up and walk outside. 

—

And then we’re in the hotel and my mouth is on him. 

It feels like I’ve blinked back into consciousness. 

His shirt is off and my hands are pressed like a brand into his skin, one on his back, one on his jaw. My teeth are in his neck. He’s moaning, whining. He’s calling me Theo. I walk us to the bed, push a knee up between his legs. He turns his head, kisses me hard and wet and I feel faint. 

He’s falling back onto the mattress and he pulls me down after him. His tongue is in my mouth and I can taste him, vodka and cigarettes. Bitter and sour and slightly sick, but I need it. I need him. I tug at his jeans, pulling them down enough to palm at him through his briefs. He bites down on my lower lip and I watch his eyes flutter shut, feel him shake when I press harder, feel him come when I wrap a clammy hand around him. 

I wipe my hand off on his jeans and when I look back he’s asleep. I feel slightly hysterical, tugging his shoes off and sliding his pants the rest of the way down. I manhandle him onto the bed until he’s laying on his side, I cover him up so he doesn’t get cold. 

I fall asleep fully clothed, shoes still tied. 

—

I wake before him. My stomach turns and I swallow compulsively. 

He’s turned towards me. I can see the imprint of my teeth in his shoulder. 

I watch him until he blinks awake, groaning, running a hand over his face. Then I have to look away. I don’t think I’ll be able to shrug away a second round of bruises. 

He drags himself from the bed and into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him. And then, nothing. 

I picture him standing in front of the mirror, blinking at his reflection. The bites and the bruises, the smear of come on his abdomen. I wonder if he’s remembering nights in Vegas like I had, the messy indelicacy of it. The evidence wiped up after taking turns being sick, his head in his hands until I had emptied the contents of my stomach. Me first, always me first. Not anymore, his fingertips tracing along his neck. The absence of sound sounds like my name. 

I wonder how long we can stay in this stalemate, neither of us confronting the obvious. The bathroom door opens and he’s standing there. He’s blurry without my glasses. I squint and he looks sheepish, like an optical illusion. He looks like he doesn’t know what to say. It’s a first. His mouth opens and closes. 

I blurt out the words that have been sitting in my mouth for what feels like years-- “I’m sorry.”

He shakes his head. “Why?” He walks towards me. I feel like shrinking back against the wall. 

“We were drunk, and I,” I’m stuttering, messing up the words. They keep coming before I’m ready to let them out. “I shouldn’t have.”

He crawls onto the bed, hands and knees. My gut twists. “No reason to be sorry, Theo.”

And my name sounds even better in his mouth when he isn’t slurring it. 

I want to explain this away so badly, but we’re both mostly sober, heads aching. His eyes are clear. We stare at each other. And then he leans down and kisses me. I kiss back, of course. Going where he leads me, and vice versa, always. 

He’s in my lap, then, leaning down with elbows on both sides of my head. His tongue is in my mouth again. I can’t even mind the morning breath— I remember pulling away from Kitsey before she knew what was happening, her tagging along and glancing at me in the mirror as we both brushed our teeth. He tastes sweet if only because I’m suddenly allowed to have this. 

The morning after visiting his wife, his kids. His hips in my hands. I push up against him and he moans into my mouth. 

And then we’re moving. I’m rolling him over and his legs are around my waist. 

He’s laughing, smiling. “Why are you wearing so many clothes?” He tugs at my belt. “Ridiculous. Take them off.”

So I do, suddenly frantic. I want to get back to him. It feels wrong to not be touching him. I linger on my boxers for a moment until he, cheeky as ever, even with his face bright red, pulls his briefs down and flings them across the room. And then I’m back on top of him and it’s like my brain is short-circuiting, all of our skin touching. A feedback loop. He tugs me down and kisses me hard. 

We’re rutting against each other like teenagers— like we did when we were teenagers, desperate and sweat-slick. Except now we don’t have to be quiet, we don’t have to be half-clothed and scared. We’re moaning and laughing and so incredibly, ridiculously happy. Sounds get trapped between our mouths until I- he- both of us get close and they escape, my teeth scraping his neck, his hands on my back and his nails digging in. 

And then it’s over, just as fast as it started. We’re breathing hard, still laughing and holding onto each other. The end so unlike ends of the past. Losing consciousness, waking with no recollection. The sun is streaming into the room. A sunny winter day in Stockholm. I feel wide awake, for the first time in years. 

I drag fingers through his hair, tug on it a bit. He grins and I have to kiss him again. It feels like we could stay this way forever. He pulls back, suddenly, nose wrinkling. “Go brush teeth,” he says, “I tolerated in the heat of the moment, but you taste terrible.”

I kiss his neck and slide off of him to do that. I think, in a strange burst of melancholy, about the painting. about it bringing us together and apart and back together again. I think about my mother. I think about how much she would have liked him. I think about traveling the world with him and eventually settling down. I think about how strange it feels to be happy. and then,

“Hey, Potter,” he calls right before I shut the bathroom door behind me. He’s laying back, hands behind his head, completely naked and unashamed, flushed down to his chest. “I love you.”

And I say it back. of course I do. 

**Author's Note:**

> back with another fic w a mitski lyric title so you know i'm going through it. leave comments if you please i am very insecure. love y'all.


End file.
